The Philadelphia Flyers won the expansion draft the moment they called Bernie Parent’s name. Question: did they also win the expansion draft overall?

During the series I’ve been listing GP for goaltenders and skaters separately. Here are the combined totals:

TOTAL NHL GAMES PLAYED BY EXPANSION DRAFT PICKS

Philadelphia Flyers (5,755)

Los Angeles Kings (5,265)

Oakland Seals (5,106)

Minnesota North Stars (5,097)

St. Louis Blues (4,986)

Pittsburgh Penguins (3,523)

Flyers overall are well clear of teams 2-5 (who are basically the same) and then Pittsburgh comes in last with a flawed draft strategy. The Flyers strategy–identical to that of the KC Royals–was to take their 20 best shots and acquire young players who had already shown themselves capable of playing at the NHL (or just below) level. This may appear obvious now, with so many expansions since 1967, but clearly teams like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Oakland were selecting veterans at every turn.

DOUG FAVELL

GOALIE TOTALS

Philadelphia (924)

Oakland (648)

Minnesota (546)

Pittsburgh (342)

St. Louis (141)

Los Angeles (139)

This basically reflects youth versus experience. The oldest goalies taken in the draft (Sawchuk to LA, Hall to St. Louis) didn’t have much blacktop left. Pittsburgh bungled their robbery, Oakland and Minnesota selected good future #1’s (Smith and Maniago, respectively) and Philadelphia ran the table by picking the pocket of Boston’s Milt Schmidt.

TOP 5 GOALIES

Bernie Parent, Philadelphia (551)

Gary Smith, Oakland (527)

Cesare Maniago, Minnesota (513)

Doug Favell, Philadelphia (373)

Roy Edwards, Pittsburgh (236)

SKATER TOTALS

Los Angeles (5,126)

St. Louis (4,845)

Philadelphia (4,831)

Minnesota (4,551)

Oakland (4,458)

Pittsburgh (3,181)

The team that had been roundly criticized after the draft ended up with the most skaters GP. Interesting. St. Louis ended up with a fine total and as mentioned earlier focused heavily on immediate help like Glenn Hall, Al Arbour and Bill Hay. Paid off in the first three years of expansion.

That youngster Cesare Maniago was indeed a future #1, but he’d already been around a while. Among other things, he was the goalie of record when Boom Boom Geoffrion scored his 50th goal back in 1960-61. But he was still just 28 on draft day, so he had lots of career still in front of him. Made the most of the opportunity, too.